Self-Defeating Politics 

Mauritian society has thrived more on its differences than on its commonalities. It is time we leave behind those bad habits.In the olden days of great misery across the board, people claimed superiority over each other by their degree of proximity to the owner of the sugar estate (the centre of economic power). If they did not have the same skin colour as the latter, at least they shared the same religion with him and deemed themselves to be therefore on a par with him at this level and superior to the others who followed a different path. Among the latter, superiority was claimed, in turn, on the basis of social differentiation. People tended to band together according to a pre-established social differentiation factor. Some put themselves at the top of this kind of social scaling ladder, considering the others inferior to themselves and, hence, worthy of their contempt or look-down attitudes. Divisions were rife despite the subsequent introduction in the country of social movements which took an integrative and diametrically opposed stand, in opposition to those artificial social scaling factors.